Welcome 

 
Contagious is all about word of mouth, why things catch on? It reveals the strategies behind successful viral marketing campaigns that have significantly boosted revenue. This book was timely for me since I am creating a marketing strategy for a small start-up with a small budget. I am trying to understand the basics of marketing and its psychology. That is why I read Buyer Personas by Adele Revella and Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. Both were insightful, but this one stood out. Before reading, I had a conception that viral content is mostly born by luck. I merely guessed that evoking strong emotions and being radical were necessary to create viral content. I was wrong again, Jonah Berger proved me wrong. So, let us dive into the world of (valuable) virality and word of mouth marketing! 

 
STEPPS, Framework 
 
Jonah Berger has created a concept that he calls STEPPS. It includes key steps for activating and creating things that will gain lots of word of mouth. While ’Buyer Personas’ by Adele Revella provided valuable insights, it left me with an incomplete picture. Her methods were not applicable to everyone. They were the most effective within big companies and in the business-to-business playground. Fortunately, Berger’s STEPPS framework is deployable for everyone, whether you have a small start-up or are working in a marketing team for a huge corporation. I would like to remind you that the following is not a recipe, so not all six ingredients are required to make a product or idea contagious. Let me introduce the STEPPS framework by Jonah Berger.  

Social Currency  We share things that make us look good.	Does talking about your product or idea make people look good? Can you find the inner remarkability? Leverage game mechanics? Make people feel like insiders?
Triggers  Top of mind, tip of tongue.	Consider the context. What cues make people think about your product or idea? How can you grow the habitat and make it come to mind more often?
Emotion  When we care, we share.	Focus on feelings. Does talking about your product or idea generate emotion? How can you kindle the fire?
Public  Built to show, built to grow.	Does your product or idea advertise itself? Can people see when others are using it? If not, how can you make the private public? Can you create behavioral residue that sticks around even after people use it?
Practical value  News you can use.	Does talking about your product or idea help people help others? How can you highlight incredible value, packaging your knowledge and expertise into useful information others will want to disseminate?
Stories  Information travels under the guise of idle chatter.	What is your Trojan Horse? Is your product or idea embedded in a broader narrative that people want to share? Is the story not only viral, but also valuable?

S(T)EPPS, Triggers 
 
STEPPS can be integrated in the product while it is designed. But as I said, not all six ingredients are required to make the product contagious. If the product does not have enough ingredients, they can be added in marketing. For example, KitKat created a successful advertising campaign where they used Trigger effectively. Colleen Chorak was given a task to revive the KitKat brand. She did some research and found a couple of things. Consumers often ate KitKats to take a break, and many of those consumed it with a hot beverage. She had an idea, KitKat and Coffee. Soon it was clear that the campaign was a hit. Not only because of a trigger, but the trigger played a crucial role here. They might as well have used “KitKat and Cantaloupe” because it is equally alliterative. But coffee is a particularly good thing to link the brand to because it is a frequent stimulus in the environment. Many people drink coffee during their breaks, so KitKat used coffee as a weapon to remind people of their product. Due to this campaign coffee was now an effective trigger for having a KitKat and sales increased. 
 
STE(P)PS – Public 
 
Is it easier to market a shirt than a pair of socks, yes. Why? Because shirts are public, and socks are private. Think of the Movember campaign, they turned private (donating) into public (mustache), and it is an all-time example of utilizing the public principle. We are currently building the first product in our small startup. It is a kitchen scale which uses AI to learn, comes with an app and makes it easier to track macros. The product itself has some contagious characteristics. For example, the device is built to be as aesthetic as possible. Our product differs from the competition in that it is designed to be public in relation to other equivalent products. Most of the kitchen scales do not fit the home interior and are hidden in the kitchen cabinets. We thought that the Scale should be an eye catcher in the kitchen. For us, Publicity may be one of the key STEPPS to create word of mouth. In the ideal situation people are in the kitchen discussing the premium features of our Scale. The conversation started because the Scale was public and satisfied aesthetically. If we understand these kinds of situations, then our mission is to boost them with marketing.  

 
STEPP(S) – Stories  
 
Have you ever read the story of Three Little Pigs? Stories can carry a huge amount of information. Even that story carries a weightful message and lots of information. (Read it!) There is also an exceptional story of a man named Jared Fogle. He lost 245 pounds eating only Subway sandwiches. The story is great, but the benefits for Subway are even greater. When someone tells you this story, you do not only learn about Jared. You will learn that (1) Subway is fast food, but they have healthy options. (2) You can lose weight with Subway. (3) A lot of weight. (4) Subway must taste good if someone eats it for 3 months. You would rather share Jared´s story with your friends than a normal Subway ad which tells the information through the ordinary way, right? I encouraged our Scale team to think if we could build a bigger story out of our company. A story that arouses awe-feeling. Could we take customers with us to follow our journey as 20-year-old boys trying to build better smart home devices than we have nowadays. Could it be interesting enough for people to share or is this just utopian? I do not know.  

(S)TEPPS – Social Currency 

Do you care what others think about you? I do care, but many people say they do not. Unfortunately, the fact is that we want to look good in the other’s eyes. People care about their performance in relation to others and it is a powerful factor of why people share things. I would see leveraging of the game mechanics as an interesting part of the social currency principle. A real-life example of simple gamification is the credit card business. The color of your credit card tells your rank so clearly that even people who are not familiar with the domain will understand your status. We are having discussions about how we could integrate the game mechanics into our macro-tracking app. It must be made easy to compare yourself to others. Preferably so easy and simple that even people outside the system will understand how others are doing. 
 
It was a pleasure. 
 
Creating viral content is challenging yet achievable, and for a start-up on a small budget, it is not desirable but essential. As the Scale progresses, we will be applying some of the STEPPS to our marketing. I expect us to face obstacles related to time, budget, and expertise, but I believe the solutions may lie in the STEPPS framework. The greatest takeaway from this book for me has been the realization that the combination of reading, writing, doing, and critical thinking is crucial in understanding the full scope of a concept. That is what I believe in from now on!